The Solar Orbiter Thermal Design
- Paper number
IAC-05-C2.6.02
- Author
Mr. Aleksander Lyngvi, European Space Agency (ESA)/ESTEC, The Netherlands
- Coauthor
Dr. Anthony Peacock, European Space Agency (ESA)/ESTEC, The Netherlands
- Coauthor
Mr. Nicola Rando, European Space Agency (ESA)/ESTEC, The Netherlands
- Year
2005
- Abstract
The Solar Orbiter mission is part of ESA’s science program, Cosmic Vision 2020. In the last year this mission has been studied in an assessment phase aiming at demonstrating technical feasibility and defining the mission at systems level. The Cosmic Vision 2020 was presented for ESA’s Space Policy Committee (SPC) as the new science programme in 2002 and it contains groups of missions related technically or programmatically. In this programme the Solar Orbiter was grouped together with BepiColombo and the already launched SMART-1. By pursuing use of common elements for these missions it is envisioned that the total mission costs can be considerably reduced. The Solar Orbiter will explore the innermost regions of the heliosphere from high heliopsheric latitudes. It will reach a distance of 0.22 AU from the Sun and obtain an inclination of 35 degrees with respect to the Sun’s equator. In these areas a series of in-situ and remote sensing measurements will be performed, providing first time in-situ measurements of regions so close to the sun and at the same time provide arcsec resolution imagery. Additionally, the Solar Orbiter will provide the first ever out-of-the-ecliptic imaging and spectroscopic observations of the Sun’s poles. The main technical challenge for the Solar Orbiter is to design a spacecraft capable of withstanding the extreme thermal environment. As the spacecraft approaches 0.22 AU it will experience a thermal flux of approximately 28 000 W/m2. To protect the spacecraft bus from this flux a sun shield is used. This shield requires innovative design and materials in order to keep both the radiated and conducted heat flux at a minimum. In addition to the shield and the Thermal Control System (TCS) design all elements directly exposed to the sun such as HGA and Solar arrays need to be designed for surviving the thermal flux. This also complicates verification and testing as currently no facility exists to give a representative environment. Innovative solutions are therefore required on both system and element level. This paper will outline the work done on the sun shield and the Solar Orbiter thermal design. A discussion on of the trade-offs conducted, the design, the payload interfaces and accommodation and the current development status will be given. Furthermore, current solutions towards test and verification of the system will be discussed together with a description of future work on TCS technologies for the Solar Orbiter.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-05-C2.6.02.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.